


if you have ghosts

by rotrograde



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Chronic Illness, Existential Crisis, M/M, Nihilism, POV Shiro (Voltron), Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn, That turns into - Freeform, if you can call our setting more modern than the more modern canon verse of the show anyway, more tags will be added as the fic trundles on, oh well, optimistic nihilism, shiro's having a hard time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-09-16 03:41:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16946301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rotrograde/pseuds/rotrograde
Summary: People talk about fate and life as casually as they do the weather. Takashi Shirogane has always found it hard to fit in with the given outline and give his faith to whatever and just let anything happen. While older now, he's always believed deep down, in that childlike soul of his, that fate isn't quite as it always seems.





	1. I.

Shiro dragged his hands down his face. 

Finals. 

They were rather final, after all. 

A thesis even more so, with its deadline breathing down the back of his neck and working Shiro into an exhausted frenzy. It wasn't that he wasn't prepared for it. In fact, it was the opposite. He was too prepared. He'd spent weeks on this, months. But the warm breeze that gusted through his open window, throwing his gossamer curtains into soft waves with the promise of spring he could taste on the wind...

It was both unfair and so, so tantalizing. The air was damp with the promise of rain, rendering the sunshine watery and hidden behind blotchy, grey clouds. They streaked out like claw marks ripped through a bright blue sky, and the winds they offered carried the sounds of birdsong from flocks newly migrated back into the area. 

It was the kind of day where his mind helplessly wandered. To different lives he could be living, to far-off places he could be. The grass rolling in waves underneath the wind on the hillsides was hypnotic, drawing his eyes to the soft stalks freshly grown only some weeks prior. Everything was just so new and fresh and dewy, and Shiro wanted to bury himself in the wet mud and be lost to the earth forever. 

Which was ironic, when fifty pages of theoretical space travel sat before him. Shiro watched the screen of his laptop dim, and he couldn't bring himself to do much more with it. He let his shoulders slump as his hand dragged itself down the lid of his computer, snapping it gently shut for the time being. Shiro leaned his cheek into his palm and watched the sky outside instead, the amalgamation of clouds that were both sparse and heavy, and somehow both at once. And also just...not there, periodically. They hung low to the ground nonetheless, chasing the planes slowly through the sky, and his chest burned for...for more. 

What that more was, he didn't know. It was so easy to feel a tug at the ribs, an instinct telling him to follow their direction. He had once, to the woods outside town. They were technically a small park in his middle-of-nowhere, a refuge to everyone from small children to the frisky teenagers to the elderly. Shiro would have gone further, past all of that, if not for the fact the sun had been setting behind the snow-capped evergreens. The spaces between the trees had always had an eerie, primordial darkness among their trunks, and Shiro was too much of a wuss at the end of the day to slip between them. 

So he'd gone back home, and mostly forgotten about that night and the feelings that had sparked his little journey. He furrowed his brow in thought, thinking hard about it. It had been about five months ago, at that point. And while Shiro hadn't gone any further, there had been something he found on the sidewalk that guided him back home. 

It was a simple note:

_it's killing me when you're away_

It was signed with a small K. The handwriting was both unrecognizable and yet familiar, and Shiro had stood in the frozen air as night settled quietly around him, staring at the elegant curving of the letters like he was trying to decipher a code. He had stood there a good while, before the imminent threat of frostbite and the bitter chill of a snowstorm rolling in ushered him home.

Shiro looked away from the window and to his side. Next to his computer was a small, simple, square wooden box in the shape of a chest. He mostly kept little notes in it, letters from home and the occasional piece of jewelry in there. He dug carefully into its depths for that note, finding its stained and wrinkled paper easily among the pristine white of the other pages and notecards. 

He smoothed it out on his desk, reaching for his mug. He took a lazy swig from his tea as he glossed over the letters again, the feeling in his chest dripping slowly down into his stomach. He was certain the note had probably been for someone else, written by a stranger he'd never met. He certainly didn't know anyone with a K in their name intimately enough to warrant this kind of thing. 

So the note had remained a mystery, and despite his best efforts, Shiro just couldn't toss it. Every time he tried, he just...felt too bad about it. So he'd kept it, somewhere private and personal to him, and let it rest. He thought he was going to let it rest forever, but his wandering mind and random wanderlust had him thinking about it again, apparently. 

Shiro sighed, cupping his mug in both hands and squaring his shoulders. He gazed down his nose at the note, watching it, staring at it, waiting like it could give him the answers he sought. But it was just a piece of paper and Shiro wasn't some forensic scientist that had access to a database that could help him find that one person with this exact handwriting. That just wasn't how life worked. Television made it seem so easy, but unfortunately for him, he was stuck with this little nagging piece of paper that had wormed itself into his head and made a home there. 

Maybe it was the fact that it had been written so solemnly. It had been dry when Shiro picked it up, but there were the signs of drops dusted across the page, like an errant tear had escaped while the words were being written. One large stain had caught in the first _I_ of the note, causing the ink to distend and blossom out through the page like a wilting flower. It left it distorted and willowy, a subtle sign that whoever had wrote it seemed to be miserable. 

Shiro knew that all too well, to be honest. 

And maybe that was another reason why he hadn't been able to bring himself to just toss it. He remembered sitting in his dorm room, locked away from the outside world, after the end of him and what he thought was his significant other. Shiro had written similar notes like this, but he'd taken them and burned them in his trash can. It was a cathartic fire hazard that had helped more than he wanted to let on. 

Slowly, and dozens of charred notes later, Shiro was able to claw out from his slump and be somewhat like himself again. Of course he had the help of friends, from Matt to Katie and their family. The two new students in Katie's freshman classes she had become friends with, Lance and Hunk, who were also in same courses as her. Lance, less so, with his... _attitude,_ but...

He snapped out of it. He'd let his mind wander too far, and all it did was worsen the feeling in his gut. It roiled, and it swelled uncomfortably into an uneasy anxiety. The _tug_ grew all the more insistent, and Shiro looked out the window one more time. 

He sat still, for a good long while. He checked the date, the time: 

4:03  
Tuesday, March 12, 2019

He checked the weather, too. Just scattered showers, splotchy sunlight, and expected, steady drizzling in the evening. The perfect kind of weather if someone didn't mind getting a little wet. And to be honest, at that point, Shiro really didn't care. 

He slid his chair back from his desk, rising from his seat with a groan. He carefully stretched his sore and taut muscles, popping each joint slowly. Relief slowly flooded into him in time with the return of normal blood flow, and he was finally able to slip a light jacket over his shoulders and make his way outside. 

He didn't live at his dorm anymore. He was staying with his mother for the time being, out in the awkward area caught between the coast and the mountains. If he tried really hard and added a healthy dose of imagination to the brew, he could almost smell the salt from the sea. 

The wind picked up in intensity, and Shiro covered his eyes with an arm. It rushed past him up the hill, seemingly pushing him to follow its course. And maybe it was a little silly to think the universe was doing something for him, and maybe it was actually kind of stupid to think like that, but Shiro needed it. He didn't want to admit it, but he did. In the months following his fallout with Adam, with his degree he was rushing and scrambling to save, _terminally ill_ stamped above his head in neon lettering, he always kept his eye out for signs. Small ones, insignificant ones. Just something to remind him that he was still human and that there were things to continue to strive for. 

He didn't yearn for it as much as he had back then, but in moments like these, where the day shrouded itself in some fae magic and convinced Shiro there was more to the glimmering veil of reality, he let his hopes swell. It was a horribly contrived kind of mindset, but one Shiro found all too easy to slip into. 

Bad habits formed when he was a child, he supposed. But those habits had comforted him, offered an escape when he needed it most. The world had been so magical to him as a kid, so large, unending, full of wonder and mystique. He'd wanted to see it all, believe in it all. He wanted to know if there really was more out there than what they were given, and he wanted to know why they were even there, on their little blue planet floating in the space they were glued to. 

A mindset that fed into his little coping escapism technique, but one he had better control of now than he did as a kid. After all, there just wasn't an easy way to leave the crust and go elsewhere. That was impossible.

It was with some remorse that Shiro reached the top of the hill. As soon as he straightened himself to gaze out across the land, the small town, the trees in the distance and the blue horizon, the wind had stopped. The clouds above kept to their courses, floating past and occasionally blotting out the sun. Shiro watched them for a bit, the longing in his chest turning into what almost felt like homesickness. It was a terrible and awful ache, and he pressed his palm to his breast, clutching his jacket tightly in his fingers. 

How long he'd been standing there, he didn't know. What he did know was that the only thing to break him from his stupor was the sharp sting of something smacking against his cheek. He nearly lost it to the wind, but the folded piece of paper seemed to conveniently flutter to his open palm where he immediately squeezed his fingers around it. 

Right away Shiro knew what it would be. It felt like the last note, with the same texture of the last one, a distinct heaviness to it as a whole. Yet there was something about this one that made him hesitate. It felt too much like prying into personal business he'd never been a part of, sifting for a confession that bled through an open wound. These notes, whatever they were, weren't for him. 

Why they kept finding themselves at Shiro's feet, he didn't really have an answer for. It was funny how he could one-eighty from looking for a sign to convincing himself that he shouldn't pry into any happenstance at all. That he should just keep to himself and let whatever happen, happen. It was easier that way, and it had been good advice from Adam...he supposed. 

And that's what cemented his final decision in unfolding the page. It was a bit more yellowed than the last, the ink faded like it had been left in the sun. But the words were stark against the background, all too easy to read in that beautiful handwriting Shiro dearly wished he could track down.

_i know you're out there  
i'll find you  
i promise i'll bring you back home_

Shiro read over the words for a while.

The occasional raindrop splashed heavily against the paper, and the wind whipped at its frayed edges like it was trying to take back what belonged to it. Shiro refused to let go. The words left him feeling hollow, an inexplicable sadness blossoming in his core. He couldn't really explain why reading the words made him feel like this, like he'd forgotten something, somebody, that he'd left behind long ago. 

Shiro read the words over and over again until they'd been seared into his mind. And even then he continued to still hold onto the paper, clutched tight to his chest as he sank down into the grass. There wasn't much else to do aside from watch the sun crawl across the sky, brilliant and bright and haloed by its own aura. The clouds darkened on that distant blue horizon, and every new sign pointed to home as distant thunder rolled across the sky.

Shiro's thinking got away from him, like it was wont to do. But his phone vibrated suddenly at his side, causing his muscles to jump and his spine to stiffen. Checking the preview, he scanned a message sent to him from Matt:

_hey!! come meet me at C's  
it's been a while and i bet you could use a drink._


	2. II.

That was an understatement. 

The only issue was that Matt knew alcohol didn't mix well with Shiro's medications. Matt also knew Shiro would find any excuse to stay at home, lying in bed until the last possible minute. Luckily the end of the semester was generally uneventful, but that didn't mean there was any less to do. It also didn't mean Shiro was going to drag his ass out to do more than he needed to do, recreational fun or not.

So Matt showed up anyway, uninvited, a foil-wrapped plate in hand. 

“You're lucky my mother's out of town,” Shiro deadpanned. 

“Ah, c'mon. After the stories she's regaled, I'm sure she'd join in if she had the chance.” Matt flicked Shiro's nose before welcoming himself inside. He at least had enough courtesy to remove his shoes at the door, balancing the plate perfectly in one hand as the other worked at the laces of his Dr. Martens. 

Shiro sighed heavily, arms folded over his chest. He draped his weight over the staircase banister as he watched Matt closely, a small smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. “Well, I guess it's a good thing she isn't here. More for us then.” 

“There you go. There's my Shiro.” Matt finger-gunned at him before he moved to disappear into the kitchen, Shiro tailing mere seconds after him.

“You know,” Matt called out loudly, unaware of Shiro at his heels, “I miss doing this.” 

Shiro flinched on the way to a chair, watching as his friend roamed about the kitchen and helped himself to two mugs from the nearby cabinet. “I mean, no one could stop this year's raging hurricane path, but still. I miss you, man. Buddy. My guy. How have you been?” 

He'd poured them both the twisted tea his mother kept in her secret stash in the fridge, and Shiro shot Matt only a paper cut of a glare as he accepted the drink. He took a long, lasting swig of it before talking, sighing heavily with his head tilted back once it'd gone down. 

“Just pretty much what I told you already. I've been as well as I can be, with my ass getting kicked twenty-four seven.” He laughed ruefully, splaying his fingers out over the side of his face. He perched his chin delicately into the palm of his hand, and he looked at Matt through his pointer and middle finger. He was tired, and he was sure it could be seen on his dipping brow. 

Tired of everything being about him these days, he pulled the reverse card from their societal deck, and with a bored tone asked, “What about you? Not everything has to be about me just because my body thinks I'm going to hit eighty early.” He emphasized the point with another long drag of his barely-spiked drink, eyebrow crawling to his hairline.

“But isn't that what you always wanted?” Matt reclined back in his seat, kicking his feet up onto the table. Shiro just _ha ha_ 'ed sarcastically, shoving Matt's legs away from himself with mild disgust etched into his frown lines. 

“Life hasn't been too bad, though. Pidge is doing just fine. Mom and Dad have been working towards retiring. Aside from school on my end, nothing much at all has been happening.” 

“So why are you here?” 

Shiro smirked, smug, before occupying that shit-eating grin with his mug. Matt kicked at him playfully, before dropping his feet back to the floor. 

“Because, man. Like I said, I miss you. And you've been here all alone the past few weeks, haven't you?” 

And then it all clicked into place. 

“Ah, I see how it is.” Shiro leaned back in his seat, drumming his fingers lazily on the mahogany wood between them. He feigned seriousness, each finger working like a doomsday metronome. “So my mother's paying you to be a glorified babysitter.” 

“Would you be mad if I said she was?” 

Shiro snorted, cocking a brow. He grabbed his drink again and fully drained it, fruitlessly chasing a buzz that was nearly impossible to get these days. “I talk to her every night. I'm a good kid. I make sure she has nothing to worry about.” 

“But she still does, you know. We all do.” Matt had that look in his eye, that dangerous look he'd carried for so long after Shiro's and Adam's breakup. Shiro hated it, had despised it, but he'd learned to take it in stride these days. He sighed and crossed his arms defensively, legs mirroring them with an ankle to bouncing knee. 

“It's the same thing from the doctor, Adam's fine according to his Facebook, and my thesis is almost finished. The worst I do is crack a couple morbid jokes with you, Matt. I've been _fine._ ” 

And damn, even Shiro had convinced himself he was. His voice harbored enough confidence to carry the point home, and Matt shook his head with a hand raised in defeat. 

“All right all right,” he conceded, finishing his own drink with his eyes at the patio door windows. The sun was setting and the trees at the edge of the yard cast their shadows in jagged, broken fingers across the grass, giving the atmosphere a completely different vibe from what it was usually like in the day. It was the time of day when Shiro closed the curtains, so he did, moving slowly as he went about the room. Call it silly, but repressed fears of the dark weren't so hidden when he was forced to look them in the eye. 

Matt was a deviant devil with a weird talent for baking, and they'd stayed in the kitchen until three that morning high on brownies that tasted like luxury chocolate heaven. Shiro, unfortunately, always forgot Matt knew how to get to the root of things, and he was good at being persistent, even when he went the baked route and was convinced there was an alien right outside the door. 

“Would you shut the fuck up, dude?” Shiro snapped, uneasy and leaning as far away from the glass doors as possible. The moon was bright and offered her own repertoire of shadow play, just enough so that Shiro's spiked paranoia convinced him he could see a vaguely humanoid shape out in the yard. “Just. Just ignore it.”

Matt laughed, melted over the table and down his chair. 

“Come on, man. I bet it's one of those freaky sex aliens. There's nothing to be scared about.” He pat Shiro on the arm, heaving himself back into an upright position. Shiro grumbled, rubbing irritably at the bridge of his nose. In the back of his mind he was always reminded of how much of a bad idea this always was. But it was bad ideas like these that suddenly loosened his lips and made him blab about personal shit that resulted in the dreaded oversharing. 

So the note was soon out on the table, the two of them poring over it. 

“So you found it today?” Matt asked, for the sixth time. 

“Yeah,” Shiro answered and explained like it was the first. Each recollection was a _little_ different from the last, but they got the point across, the point being that he had another note, and Matt knew from the last one to know how weird this was. 

He pushed his glasses from his face, like he was going to say something to solve it all. 

“It's gotta be a...what the fuck are they called. Starving artist? Starving poet? Something stupid like that.” 

Shiro felt his expression clear into something neutral, and he snatched the note back, offended. Why he was offended, he didn't really know, but the feeling was there anyway. He brought the note closer to his chest, looking it over one more time before tucking it into the breast pocket of his denim jacket where it had been prior. 

“Maybe it is,” he said, leaning back in his seat, “but I don't know. What if it is someone out there? Would they be happy with knowing I was getting their notes?” 

“Buddy. Buddy.” 

The front legs of Matt's chair snapped back to the floor, and he bent over _real far_ in his seat to better look Shiro in the eye. 

“You...” He scooted a little closer. 

“Are reading...” He was in Shiro's personal space— 

“Too much into this.” 

He accentuated his final words with a light, sharp smack to Shiro's cheeks. “They're just coincidental. Maybe even somebody's fucking with you. But I wouldn't bring out the Sherlock Holmes novels over badly-written poetry and Maroon 5 lyrics.” 

The latter part of the sentence took Shiro completely by surprise. He just let his jaw hang uselessly open while he attempted to formulate something to spit back, but... 

But Matt was right. Shiro was tired and maybe not as okay as he'd initially said, and the night took a more somber turn. They always did. 

“The only good thing is the disease apparently regressing,” he muttered, head cradled in his arms. Shiro had bent over and completely hidden himself, pressed flat to the table in the hopes of either becoming one with it, or maybe even falling asleep. It was a good excuse to not have to look outside, though. “I haven't dared to get my hopes up, but at the same time, if that's true, then...fuck. I wouldn't know what to do with myself.” 

Shiro had pretty much gotten everything out of the way early. Make-a-Wish had been a prominent force in his life from ages 11 to 13. He'd taken his mom on vacation to the one place she'd always wanted to go to, out in the salt flats of Bolivia where they spent multiple evenings just gazing out at the stars. Shiro remembered it all fondly, mirrored glitter refracted off of impossibly still water, the sheer amount packed into the inky depths of the sky above staggering. It was too much. It opened a yawning chasm in Shiro's soul, sucking in the spray of twinkling light of both new and dying stars, galaxies that encroached on each other, supernovae that raged without end. 

Shiro had had his first existential crisis, and he remembered wondering if God was out there. And if He was, why was He making his mom cry during what was supposed to be a happy time for the both of them? Why was He doing any of this? What was His reasoning for it? 

Shiro sighed bitterly, turning his head to look at Matt. “I've done it all, man,” he said, despondent in tone. He'd even graduated from high school early, enrolled in college courses in his sophomore year. He'd done pretty much all there was to do in life. The only thing he was really missing out on was having a family of his own. But that was out of the question, with his shit genetics (and it's not like he'd even try for a baby, anyway). 

So that just left meaningful relationships. But if he really was going to kick the bucket before the sun rose on his twenty-fifth birthday, then there was no point. Shiro had tried, and it had bitten him in the ass harder than any new curve ball from his disease had. He was still recovering from the sting Adam had left behind, gouging out the stinger that still flooded Shiro's veins with bitter venom. Quite frankly it hurt, and he'd vowed to never do it again. 

So he heaved another breath, gaze turned glossy as it slid to the far wall over Matt's shoulder. “I can't be told this,” he muttered. “I've lived my life to die. I've got nothing else to look forward to now.” 

“Jesus.” 

Matt palmed his eyes, keeping his hands in place. He was tired and so was Shiro, but Shiro had said something that would keep Matt up all night if it was needed. Shiro regretted that. 

“It'll be all right, man. Just...one way or the other. Don't stress it. We gotta take it one day at a time, right? That's the best we can do.” 

He let his hands fall back to the table, head quickly bowed. Shiro heard what sounded like a soft sniffle, and he knew he'd crossed a line. 

“...Yeah,” he said, agreeing simply for the moment to just pretend that maybe, just maybe, things would be okay. That _was_ the best they could do. 

Shiro slid his chair next to Matt's, bumping shoulders. Matt leaned into Shiro's presence and stayed there, head cradled to Shiro's shoulder. It was a dead habit from when they were younger, when Matt felt left out in lieu of all of the attention going to his baby sister. Shiro had always been there, and Shiro always would. For as long as he could be, anyway. 

So Shiro wrapped his arm around Matt's shoulder and hugged him close, letting the other doze as he simply watched the sun rise on another, very much alive, day. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and there she is. you can find me at both [my tumblr](https://rottedflowerpits.tumblr.com/) and my [my pillowfort!](https://www.pillowfort.io/rottedflowerpits)


	3. III.

Shiro frequented the hospital. Often. 

Checkups, when something felt wrong. Hell, he even went there just for something to do. But despite it being a fairly high-end place, a brand new building stuffed with beautiful, spiraling glass art and esoteric paintings, it was still a place where people went to die. And while Shiro couldn't do much about that, he did volunteer his free time to what he could help. 

He wasn't religious. Neither was his mother. They'd both lost any faith in everything pretty quickly after their D-Day, so optimistic nihilism came to Shiro probably easier than most of the other nurses and doctors. They cared, they offered, but in the end, they fell short. 

So Shiro was part of a small group of volunteers, people who were like him, either considered terminal and waiting out the early stages, or somehow miraculously recovering but left with the gaping wound of a ruined ¼ of their life. But despite the rather morbid description, it wasn't all bad. They were good people, people Shiro gleaned the tiniest bit of necessary human interaction from. It was easy to be himself around them, to talk to ears that weren't of an overbearing mother or friends who'd take a joke the wrong way. It was refreshing, to have that party in their coffins. 

Except now it was...different. Shiro hadn't told anyone about the news; after all, getting his hopes up was off the table. He also felt like a cheat, somehow, like he was betraying the cause. The last person to have slowly fought through and gotten better was long gone by now, backpacking in Europe and finding herself. Shiro wasn't proud of it but they had all cracked a few bitter jokes, echoing _it must be nice,_ before falling into a poignant silence. 

But they were happy for her. They tried to be happy about the deck of cards they'd been given to gamble with. And in the moments in the warm sunshine filtered through a domed glass ceiling laced over with overgrown foliage, it was easy to forget about life. 

It was the commons area of the ward where people remained in limbo. Caught between intensive care and hospice, it was made into as much of a delicate respite as it could possibly be. The walls were practically giant windows, plants everywhere and simultaneously meticulously looked after and wildly ignored. A cafe was at the far end of the lounge, and if one pretended hard enough, it could almost feel like home. Or just a casual cafe out in the real world, at best. 

Shiro's point in being there that day? He didn't know. Usually he kept patients company, offering to play a board game with the younger ones or just have a chat with some of the more tired individuals. But he couldn't help but feel wrong in being there, like he'd been chosen among a sea of more deserving people to carry this weird torch of a sudden God-given cure. He felt sick thinking about it, and the caramel latte with extra whip was just adding on a heartburn he really did not ask for. 

He sighed heavily. His mom was delayed another week, dealing with the drama of one of her own family. Shiro offered to make it up to her, but she insisted that no, he needed to rest. He always needed to rest, and while Shiro fought the rhetoric as much as he possibly could, he...he just wanted to rest. 

He hung his head between his arms, bent at the elbows propped on the table. He rubbed at the back of his head, groaning quietly as he fought with himself over what to do. He had a thesis to write still, but it was nearly done, and he still had plenty of time. But this was his final year of _anything,_ because he'd been led to believe that this would be his final year, period. 

And yet the disease hadn't been showing any of the aggressive symptoms that were supposed to be developing in his muscles; it just left his joints in their usual state—an unpleasant state, but one that didn't mean imminent death. 

The doctors had offered a therapist. They always did, when they sensed the depression, or anxiety, was hitting an all-time low or high. They were good about that. The people here actually cared, but they cared a little too much. Too many of them were into the idea of fading peacefully into the background, surrounded by people who wanted to just _discuss._

Discuss last minute bucket list plans. Discuss how they wanted to die. Discuss funeral arrangements. Discuss how they felt. There was too much stiff, rigid discussing and sympathy in every eye that looked his way. Too much private discussing with his mother, on her own, stressing her out over the possibility that Shiro would no longer be himself in a few months and she'd have to decide what he'd want, what was best for both of them. 

It was beyond ridiculous. 

But it was a guidance where no other path could be found. It was a faint path, one not traversed too often by the normal person, but it was there. And it was pockmarked with all the care, at a certain cost, that could be offered. Shiro found himself at the fork of that path, one that arguably looked much better than the bleak future he'd been built to expect. For the first time in his life there was a ray of sunshine on the skin of his soul, warming what had been so cold, so hurt, and it ached. 

Shiro didn't deserve this. He'd had it a lot easier than most others. He still got to squeak by, young and beautiful, fully mobile while others suffered, completely bedridden. So many others sacrificed so much—parts of them, their families, their friends—just for the chance to live and see another day. So many others had their deaths drawn out over the span of multiple years, painful and every second burned into their fogged heads before they were finally allowed to let go. 

Shiro would just kick the bucket, and that'd be it for him. Even in the realm of disease and cancer, he had it hilariously easy. And now he had it even better. He laughed ruefully, the sharp bark echoing through the room foreign to his own ears. His voice sounded raw, tired. Different. He _felt_ different, and it was killing him to not be able to describe why or how. 

With a defeated groan he shoved himself away from the table. He drained the last dregs of his coffee, before carrying the cup to the recycling. He could have made a cheap metaphor from the simple action, but he refrained, focusing instead on forcing his thoughts into more mindful, happier thought patterns. 

He was going to be okay. 

Everything was all right. 

He was not somehow cheating others out of a life of their own. 

It was his life, and it was okay for things to happen. 

But in all fairness, he was just forcing himself to think that way because of Matt. He was meeting him later at a small dive bar in town with all the good intentions to stay there until the early hours of the morning, completely gone and unable to think about much else. While Matt had sounded hesitant at first, he'd agreed to go with Shiro, and that was that. 

There was just the matter of waiting until it was actually time to do that. Matt said he'd be around at ten, and it was still one-thirty. The sun was bright in the sky, clouds like Monet paintings dragging elegant and wispy along the azure background. Shiro's eyes were drawn to the moon, though, and he felt everything slowly drain from his chest the longer he stared at it. 

He felt that tug, again. This time he harbored the idea of ignoring it, going to the hospital's library instead. Maybe if he ignored it, he wouldn't wander where he wasn't supposed to be, and the feeling would just go away. For as strangely ethereal as it had first been, optimistically mystical and exciting to contemplate, it just...made him feel bad, now. Guilt was the only thing to really come to him in these moments, so intense that he almost had to sit down again. 

Or maybe he was actually just physically unwell. That thought was enough to make him rebel quietly and step outside. 

Only this time, he wasn't sure where he was going. The moon was just a disc in the sky, pale and barely visible as the blue of the atmosphere swallowed its natural color. It was full, a sign of a beautiful night to come, but for now, it was painfully lackluster. Overshadowed by what it loved the most, ignored and overlooked despite being caught in its orbit. 

Shiro could relate to that. And it was with that thought in mind that he remembered Adam actually lived nearby, but that was...that wasn't a good idea. That was an idea he needed to beat back to whence it came. He hadn't talked to Adam since the breakup, and he hadn't even seen him in that amount of time, either. Despite going to the same university, they had managed to completely avoid each other. At this point it was like Adam had never existed, and...

And maybe that wasn't right. 

But Shiro also didn't need to beat himself up over that. Whether he liked it or not though, his feet were carrying him off down the road to a place he used to call his second home. And it was strange, walking an old and familiar path that managed to feel so foreign. A lot of stuff had happened on this road lined with apple trees that were budding their first blossoms of the year. They looked like little white birds clinging to branches, and Shiro watched them sway in the breeze as the wind gently rushed along and tugged at everything it touched. 

Shiro followed the wind. It was a habit now, whenever he found himself in these weird trances. It was like something, some energy, was telling him to search. Search for what, he didn't know, but there was a determination behind the feeling as much as there were guilt-laden emotions. And besides, with everything about him and his unwanted DLCs in life, he might as well just do what he wanted to, weird intrusive thoughts or not. 

He acted upon it again, letting the wind guide him down the sidewalk. It wasn't taking him to Adam's house, and for that, he was secretly grateful. He'd kind of wanted to see it again, just to see if anything had changed, but that was a sleeping dog best left to lie. Besides, the rush of the breeze seemed keen on guiding him down a trail, a winding path that snaked through the town and eventually found itself entering the woods at the far end, and then, finally, the countryside. Shiro wasn't too fond of the idea of walking _that_ far out, but he wandered down the beginnings of the trail anyway, gravel crunching underneath the soles of his shoes. 

It was quiet, which surprised Shiro. The path was narrow, but it opened into beautifully lush clearings at times, each one unique and with its own view. One clearing housed a gazebo to gaze out over the local lake, while the other, a little further ahead and situated on top of a hill, offered a beautiful view of the mountains. 

That seemed to be the place to go, so Shiro let himself wander there, the wind playing at the sides of his face like the gentle caress of a lover. It was always much farther away than it seemed, and by the time Shiro had breached the top of the path, he was winded and in desperate need of a moment to sit down. Luckily each clearing had the necessities for that: in this particular one, there was a lone bench, dedicated long ago to the early passing of someone's wife who used to live in the town. She'd passed from cancer, and...well, Shiro tried to ignore that as he made himself comfortable on the faded, sun-bleached wood. 

The mountains were, in theory, not close enough to be slightly substantial. But they could still be seen in the far distance, the sky and clouds devouring their eroded points, turning granite into a beautiful gradient to soft blue. Shiro looked out over the town at them, huddled in on himself. The simple cardigan he'd worn wasn't quite enough to keep the still-lingering chill of the wind at bay, and he wrapped the slinky fabric around him a bit more tightly, shuddering once to get his blood flow going. 

Why he was there wasn't becoming apparent. According to his phone he'd managed to kill an hour, but there still wasn't much of anything to be found. He was just winded and physically fatigued, limbs heavy with regret. Heavy exercise was starting to become the bane of his existence these days, and he tried his best not to focus on how it left him feeling after even just simple bouts of walking. 

He grit his teeth and worked on the mindfulness everyone insisted he focus on. He watched the mountains, felt the breeze on his skin. He listened idly to the birdsong around him, echoing through the leaves and bouncing off the trunks of their respective trees. He focused on the fibers that made up his clothing, the rough feel of denim against his palms. Shiro could have rooted himself there in forced peace, but he was impatient for home and a nice, long _nap._

That was his main goal at the front of his head as he hefted himself back to his feet. That was, until he happened to glance down as he stood, and noticed it there underneath the toe of his shoe. 

A note.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the story moves on...
> 
> As always, if you enjoy my work you can find me at my [tumblr](https://rottedflowerpits.tumblr.com) and [my pillowfort!](https://www.pillowfort.io/rottedflowerpits)


	4. IV.

The note lay spread-eagle on the table, exposed to the dull, green Christmas lights above their heads. Music blasted from the stereos, set to a volume that made any meaningful conversation utterly impossible. 

“Where the hell do these keep coming from?” Matt yelled, sipping his Dirty Shirley with bewilderment etched into his frown lines. 

“I wish I knew.” 

Shiro rubbed at the side of his head, leaned heavily against the palm of his hand. They'd been staring at the writing for about an hour now, doing their damnedest to figure out what it could mean. The last two notes had just been a simple line or two; this one, on the other hand, in the same writing Shiro was intimately familiar with now, was a poem. 

_but the love he shares with me_  
he writes about with the red of my veins   
the wolves chase him like bullets in a world war   
he's gone to the edges of the universe and back  
never asking for anything more 

_to be at my side,  
is all he says _

_and my promise back  
is to mirror what i can _

_and never give up on the star that kisses me  
sweet and tender each night_

It was just a poem, at the end of the day, but the words filled Shiro with such a sweet, sickly feeling that he could only stomach reading it once or twice before he had to drink at his whiskey. The gasoline burn of the alcohol was easier to swallow than the words on the page, because for some reason, he really did feel like they were directed at him. And maybe that wouldn't have been so bad if not for the fact that the page was peppered with dried tears again, the ink tugged in multiple directions at once from the drops distending their words. 

Shiro stared long and hard at the paper. It eventually got the best of him and he downed the rest of his drink, grimacing hard with a head bowed. 

“I don't know,” he said after a moment, snatching the note away. He felt too bad to look at it any longer than they had. It felt like they were violating someone via emotional torment. 

“Maybe you should try to see if you can get any fingerprints from it,” Matt called out, reclining against the wall. Not counting the drink he currently held, he was already about four shots in and three beers later. His glasses were forgotten on the table, leaving him to squint at where the letter had been, fingers tapping slowly against his glass. “I just...this is kinda creepy, man.”

Shiro wanted to agree. The first note had just been some kind of coincidence. Dropped by someone, forgotten in the snow. The second one was just serendipity. The third was...honestly, a little unsettling. If someone really was tailing him, writing love notes, then maybe it was time to try and dig deeper into the mystery. The last thing Shiro wanted was to actually have a shot at life only for it to be snuffed just as quickly by some freak accident at the hands of a serial murderer. Or worse, some obsessed admirer turned stalker. 

The thought alone made him shudder. He rubbed at the back of his neck with a sigh, his brain finding itself at the opposite side of insightful and ingenious. He was a bit too hammered for this kind of thing, and after glancing at his clock to find out it'd taken a turn after one in the morning, it was time to go home. 

With Matt in agreement, they went their separate ways in their own Lyfts. Matt had his finals to finish up in the hungover morning, and Shiro...Shiro just wanted some time to himself. He didn't remember much after getting home, aside from turning off his phone and literally falling into an unmade bed. 

When next he did wake up, it was disturbed from the best sleep he'd had in a while. The imminent threat of pissing, puking, or a horrible duet of the two was enough to chase him from the bed to the bathroom, though, where he lingered for the better part of the morning. He knew this always happened, and yet he let it happen, head heavy in the palm of his hand as he sat at the edge of the tub, watching the morning sunlight filter through the blinds and wash over the aqua-blue tiling of his bathroom. 

It was still darker, the rays that did peek over the horizon shy. The color was off a shade, more peach than yellow, and Shiro watched the light grow in intensity as he listened to the idle dripping of the faucet next to him. The chill of the porcelain tub underneath his naked thighs kept him grounded, the soft, cotton feel of his robe his only protection from the unforgiving cold air. 

His mind wandered, with groggy and tired footsteps, to memories past. This time they were flush with Adam, his soft, brown hair pressed to Shiro's cheek as they cuddled on a cheap futon they'd rescued from a street corner. They'd eaten so much Chinese takeout they'd become regulars at the place on the corner, and Shiro remembered the offhand disappointment on the employee's face when he'd broken the news to her that they had broken up. Someone else's opinion on the matter had managed to break his week, and it was over orange chicken and two orders of crab rangoon that he simultaneously ate his feelings with and also mourned the loss of something that had suddenly become so _real._ That was the last time Shiro had indulged in Chinese, or anything else he'd used to do with Adam at all. 

So that meant he didn't do a lot, anymore. Adam used to be his distraction and he knew it, taking Shiro out to what he could throughout the city and country alike, to get him to think about something that wasn't death. Adam had been good to him, too good, and now he was gone and Shiro was left with...

With these notes. These notes, that he had no idea of where they came from or what they even were, but yet managed to hold so much power over his suddenly vulnerable soul. He had all three of them at the sink's edge, their translucent pages catching the sunlight and making them glow. They were ethereal, somehow out of place in their reality, too sacred to toss or burn. Shiro wanted to be rid of them, to just throw them away along with the feelings of lingering resentment and guilt they gave him. He wanted it all gone, yet there was something about these notes, like a magnet to its polar opposite, that kept him tied to them. Soulbound, and unable to pull away. 

Shiro sighed again before swiping the notes back into the box he'd been keeping them in. He let it rest on his thighs, gazing into the depths of the cracking wood. It was the container used for several other trinkets, and while most had been cleared out, a few still lingered. He toyed with the chain of an old necklace, debating what to do as the morning sun settled over him and the bathroom. He idly watched the dust motes float through the air, slipping through the slanted light to the hallway outside. 

It was then he heard the door creak open, and ah, shit— 

“Shiro?” 

His mother's gentle rill echoed up the stairwell, and he groaned. He'd forgotten she was due to come back any day now; her coming home on a day he was completely and utterly wasted was an embarrassing unintentional accident he suddenly needed to scrub free of his skin. 

“Hey!” he called back, snapping the box shut and leaving it on top of the toilet. He threw the clothes he'd meant to change into on top of it, unsure as to why he was ashamed of the possibility of it being found. “I'm uh, I'm in the bathroom. Give me twenty and I'll be down to hear how things went?” 

Shiro heard a light agreement, before that sweet tone spoke again. 

“Of course, honey,” she said, “but be quick! I brought back your favorite dessert.” 

Shiro could picture her, all five-foot-three, waving around various slices of fruit cakes with thick frosting from an old childhood bakery. That was nearly enough to chase him downstairs like he was six again, but Shiro held fast in his determination to look presentable and less like puke-covered death. 

“I'll only be a moment,” he laughed, before finally shutting the door for good. The walls of the bathroom were nearly suffocating, the blue brighter in the full-blown morning sun. The shower curtain was dazzling in its diamond hues, and in a sudden fit of too much nostalgia, Shiro knocked his clothes from the toilet and emptied himself of any remaining dregs he could call regret. 

If Shiro had any talents, they would definitely lie in quick showers. He was in and out in less than twenty, soon downstairs and enjoying the coffee his mother had brought with her. Shiro watched her warm hazel eyes as she spoke excitedly of relatives on the West coast treating her to new cuisines and sights she hadn't gotten to see in so long. She'd gotten to go home for the first time in years, since the other man of the family had decided to dip out for good. He'd left them struggling with bill on top of bill before things finally got easier for his mom at her job. 

Even then, things weren't immediately perfect, but it had paved a way for her to be able to relax, to save up some money and be able to do things she used to enjoy. Shiro was happy for her, hopeful in the situation that if it all was a ruse and his health really did go south in the end, she'd have a way to move forward and heal. 

He was zoning out around the rim of his mug, plate of strawberry cake before him, before her words ripped him from his stupor.

“Has someone been writing you, by the way?” she asked, like she'd suddenly remembered something as she rifled through her purse. “This was outside on the front step...” 

Shiro watched in slow motion as her fingers grasped a folded piece of paper, held it delicately out to him. Shiro didn't know how much time had passed between registering what was happening and the moment he took it, but it felt like an eternity before he finally took the page, heart hammering between his ribs. 

“No,” he finally managed in a dry laugh, slowly unfolding the paper. He tried to be sly about the situation, to just take a peek at what could possibly be there, play it off like it was nothing, but... 

“What does it say, then? If it says anything at all.” 

She blinked innocently over her own drink, eyes trained on Shiro. He swallowed hard, shrugging stiffly. 

_please don't leave me_

_i love you so much_

“Just some prank the neighborhood kids have been pulling lately, I think,” Shiro muttered, feigning a heavy grimace. He was quick to bring the note to himself, crumpling it—with extreme guilt—in his hands. “I've been seeing these around. They're covered in dicks and random profanity.” 

Shiro's mom blinked, before she dissolved into soft laughter. “Ah, yeah. I used to do something similar with my friends back in the day.” She went quiet for a moment, reminiscing while Shiro chuckled. 

“But anyway,” she continued, “you look exhausted, sweetheart. Go get some rest.” 

And Shiro did. Though he didn't really sleep. He just slipped underneath his duvet and hid there, the most recent note in hand, the others shoved underneath his pillow. Something about the most recent one (and he knew he'd thought it before, said it before, but) struck him in the gut. It felt worse than the disease. 

_i love you so much_

Shiro refolded the page and clutched it hard in his hand, until the edges cut into his skin and threatened his blood. Shiro wanted to give it that sacrifice; it felt like that was the least he could do. 

But all he could do was wallow in the forced darkness of his room, blocked from the outside world, as he was left to grieve over a life he'd never lived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, if you enjoyed this chapter, a kudos is appreciated. ♥ and you can find me at my [tumblr,](https://rottedflowerpits.tumblr.com/) too.


	5. V.

Shiro dreamed vividly. He was used to saturated colors, contiguous themes of the world ending, relationships ending; himself, ending. But the dream he'd had, one that lingered and ran its never-ending courses along the rind of his skull, was a new kind of dream. 

He was himself, but he discovered after a while that he just seemed to be some sort of simulacrum. He was himself, but at the same time he wasn't. He was Shiro, but he was a Shiro out in what he'd always assumed to be a vast void of space. And while it _was,_ there was always something he never expected to see there. 

Nebulae spilled over black, with colors so vivid and hues so stark as they interlaced together in shades that made his eyes hurt. Stars like diamonds in constellations he didn't recognize formed the architectural foundation of distant galaxies, held up the planets with atmospheres and configurations that should have been impossible when it came to modern-day science. 

Yet they all seemed so real to that dream Shiro. And at first that's all the dreams were: seemingly floating in empty space, staring at the pinheads of glittering celestial bodies, asteroids made of both the mundane and crystalline components that wouldn't have a name, even if they'd managed to find their way to Earth. 

Shiro was at peace up there. Even if all he did was stare out at an expansive universe, not once did it fill him with the existential dread it used to bestow upon him, the feeling that he was just infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things. He felt like he understood, like he belonged. That at any moment he could turn back and return to someone, something, waiting for him no matter what. He felt like he'd made a home in that empty void, and his heart would swell when he thought of that home, soft and delicate, yet as dangerous as a collapsing black hole and sharper than any blade's edge. 

But then the dreams shifted. Like a curtain dropping to denounce the current scene, it had been too good. He'd indulged in them for too long. What were pleasant images of worlds unknown and exhilarating faded to bursts of panicked adrenaline. Amorphous monsters that would chase him through the dark, Shiro's feet slipping on constantly shifting sand. The monsters would moan, low and deep, guttural, like they were calling to Shiro. Like they needed him. 

Shiro could feel them thundering behind him, their moaning turning to reverberating roars. He'd run, he'd run as fast as he could until his lungs turned to fire, but always in the end they'd catch up: featureless, pale beings in the dark he could barely see from the corner of his eye. They'd catch up to him and Shiro would feel their hot, humid breath on the back of his neck, and he'd finally snap awake, his sheets intertwined with his sweat-soaked limbs. 

On that particular morning he woke, chest heaving, with his palm glued to the bridge of his nose. He kept it there until he was calm and his breathing evened out, before slowly moving it away and into proper focus before his gaze. 

There was no blood. There was no painful gash torn across the bridge of his nose, from cheek to cheek. His eyes weren't full of that same blood that had coated his hand and fingers. He could see and he was warm and he could breathe, and there was no imminent danger of a hulking shadow towering over him before delivering a final blow. 

Shiro was just safe in bed. 

There was a gnawing feeling in his gut, a voice in the back of his head that murmured a sweet nothing and convinced him that wasn't quite the case. Delusional, barely-awake thoughts that slipped through his fingers like water. Words he could barely catch in the palms of his hands and parse and compartmentalize. Distantly he wondered if there was something more to the puzzle of life, cryptic knowledge beyond a veil he just couldn't see. 

And he wondered if he'd ever get to dip past the tangible lines of reality and finally see it for himself.

– 

The steady murmur of the hospital had risen into a more prominent cacophony in the time Shiro had been absent. Talk of a newcomer lingered at every corner, soft whispers mixed with the idle conversation. Words like _he just appeared_ and _I have no idea where they said he was from, if anywhere at all_ stuck out to Shiro, sucking him helplessly into their undercurrent. He didn't fancy himself an intruder on something as mundane as conversation between a separate party, but at this point he couldn't help himself.

Shiro kept to himself, in the on-grounds cafe he already frequented so often. He wasn't the only one for once that day, and he took advantage of the subtle echo of voices, rising to the domed ceiling before dripping back down the walls, where Shiro sat listening, shamelessly eavesdropping, in the best vantage point of the room. 

Newcomers were expected. They were the usual in this wing. But someone new, without a name, just a face and a refusal to be roused from a coma, wasn't something so usual. It had taken the majority of the afternoon but the payoff was worth it, in the end. Shiro had learned that the man didn't have a name, he'd been found at the outskirts of town, and that he was in room 5. 

Room 5 was was an unremarkable detail when compared to the rest of the situation, but stuck out to him the most. It was a room located at the end of a winding hallway, a lonely refuge for patients with little to no family. Four other rooms were situated in the wing, and they were always empty. The rooms themselves were older in design, more rustic than the sterile, pristine white of modern day. Shiro had always preferred them and the warmth of the wooden trimming, the dark red walls that reflected the golden glow of floor lamps. 

The hall ended with a halved ovoid space, the bay windows wide and rising up to the ceiling. Gossamer white curtains were draped elegantly over them, thrown wide during the day. A lounge built into the walling underneath the panes housed a plush white velveteen cushion sitting atop an equally rustic chaise, a comfortable haven for anyone coming across the space to rest. It was a peaceful area of the hospital, a different world altogether, like he'd slipped past the barrier into another, simpler time. 

Shiro could picture it in his head like a well-loved Polaroid. He'd been there a lot, both by himself and the few times there had actually been someone residing there. It was a wing usually reserved for the lonely, the lost, and the dying. Shiro loved it there, but too much time spent in the space, among the smell of rotting honey and too-pungent orchids, his insides would twist and ache for the chance to do better. To have better. 

So he avoided going there, for a while. Truth be told he wanted to avoid it for as long as he could. Forever, if he could help it. It was a liminal space at best, haunted at the corners with ghosts of indifferent intentions. Shiro wasn't the superstitious kind, but he could feel _something_ there, regrets and the unwillingness to let go having leaked through dead, dried pores and clogging the vents. Maybe it was cruel of Shiro to think of the place in that way, to think of the patients like that, but he couldn't help it. Knowing that's where he himself might be carted off one day to die in peace triggered a frantic pain in his chest, and he'd learned long ago that it was best for his health altogether to just ignore it when he wanted to. 

But now, he couldn't. Too much talk of a lonely boy got the better of him, and Shiro had lingered there like the apparitions he was so leery of. He'd killed time until well into the evening, past visiting hours from which he was excluded. The harsh fluorescents gave way to dimmed lighting, casting the cavernous hallways in a dusky, navy hue that was just bright enough to set the mind at ease, yet dark enough to make the heart flutter at every movement he thought he saw from the corner of his eye. 

Yet Shiro preferred it this way. There were fewer people about, an even slimmer chance of being bothered by a nurse or a doctor, or someone else who just so happened to remember their missing family member, their friend. It was easier for Shiro to slip along the walls to that dreaded dead end, his heart rate picking up with every step until it was suffocating him in his throat. 

The ache blossomed into a slow, bone-breaking throb that melted into his core behind his ribs. Shiro barely remembered to breathe, to count to five and try again. He remembered to try and center himself. He told himself this really wasn't that big of a deal at all, but here he was, making it into a big deal after all. Shiro bit his lip, standing off to the side of the entry to room number 5. 

It was dark in there. Shiro could hear the low, rhythmic beeping of a machine, presumably keeping watch over whoever it was connected to like some dystopic, mechanical angel. The low huff of a machine, like it was sighing irritably at having to be used. And, if he strained hard enough, he thought he heard the sound of gentle breathing. How much of that was just wishful, paranoid thinking, was left to a more astute observer than he was in the moment. 

His hands had gone cold, and numb enough to the point he couldn't feel the scratchy wallpaper underneath his palm. The room felt like a yawning chasm, a void waiting with hidden malice to swallow him whole. Yet there was a _pull,_ one so familiar and amplified to the tenth degree. Shiro was all too intimately familiar with the sensation, and it tore his breath from his lungs as he stared at the room's door, left slightly ajar for the off chance of an emergency. 

Shiro didn't know how long he'd been standing there. For all he knew, it could have been one minute, one hour, five hours. Nothing moved or made a sound during that time, except for the steady, clockwork sounds of the hospital machinery. It was Morse code at this point. Shiro had spent too long trying to decipher their words, their meaning. To try and find some sense in the life he wasn't trying, but seemed destined, to waste away. 

He had never gotten any answers. Until now, anyway. 

Shiro felt himself take that first step forward, muscles stiff and uncomfortable as they were forced to function. His chest felt like it would cave in on itself at any moment, and despite the rush in his ears, the fact he couldn't feel any of his immediate extremities, he'd never felt more _alive._ Distantly he thought about this all being some self-provoked ruse, that he should prepare himself for disappointment, but there was that other side to him too, the one with the childish wanderlust, the selfish need to find something more to everything. The part of him that yearned with every fiber of his being for a sign, for something to live for. 

Shiro broke the threshold, all the while feeling as if he were pushing through a permeable mesh. Once he finally broke through and found himself in the room, he...wasn't sure at all what he expected, or what he was going to see. 

But somehow the man, his dark hair a stark contrast against the sheets, a scar emblazoned and nearly glowing underneath the neon lights of the machinery, was painfully familiar to Shiro.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof, i promise i'm still alive! just updating this when i can. as always though, you can find me via [tumblr.](https://rottedflowerpits.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> and that's that! kudos and comments are always appreciated ♥ and, for as long as it's still relevant, you can find me at my [tumblr.](https://rottedflowerpits.tumblr.com/) i've got a pillowfort coming up soon...


End file.
